With a homegrown teaching method focused on creativity, violinist Mark O’Connor is out to change the way musicians are trained

“What the O’Connor Method offers,” Zimbric noted, “is a chance for students to develop their ear and learn to play in a very holistic way, from a very early age, in the sense that they can learn to improvise and play different styles of music. I think that kind of flexibility is a really important quality for future musicians.”

Flexibility has been a cornerstone of O’Connor’s career as a performer, composer and music educator, who estimates that his annual summer fiddle camps across the country have drawn 6,000 students over the past two decades.

His goal now is to broadly establish the O’Connor Method as an alternative to Suzuki, which was created by Japanese violinist Shin’ichi Suzuki and has been the dominant teaching methodology for classical stringed instruments since the 1950s. O’Connor’s own experience learning Suzuki as a child, while short-lived, planted the seed that would lead to the O’Connor Method.

“Ninety percent of the students who come to my camps have gone through Suzuki training, and it’s an issue,” he said. “They mistakenly think Suzuki is ear training, when they are just mimicking. Anybody can memorize something, but memorization is not a musical behavior.

“One of my favorite things about American music and my method, in particular, is the history of the music contained within the method, and I make the history of the method part of the lesson. I use it to generate interest and emotion in creative thinking. The richness of the stories in American music history are much more compelling to the average child today than yet another story about the guy with the gray wig, writing music for the king and queen in England. They all have gray wigs!”

“Half the music in my method was composed by African-Americans and Latin-Americans, so the stories are very relevant to our rich and diverse cultures,” he said.

For some teachers, though, the O’Connor and Suzuki methods are compatible.

“They’re very complementary,” said Classics 4 Kids mainstay Andrea Altona, who is the president of the Musicians Association of San Diego County. She learned the O’Connor Method two years ago at a teachers seminar at UCLA and praises its emphasis on improvisation.

“I am a trained Suzuki teacher, and I think Suzuki works perfectly with the O’Connor method,” she said. “I meet people all the time who are using the O’Connor books for the same reason I do; they are really fun and a fabulous supplement for my students. It’s a very nice way to reach kids who are struggling and to keep their musical interest growing.”